Extract from Ch. 2 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
The Vanishing Glass
It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys
bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then,
because the smiling lady in the van had asked Harry what he wanted before they
could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon ice pop. It wasn’t bad, either,
Harry thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked
remarkably like Dudley, except that it wasn’t blond.
Harry had the best morning he’d had in a long time. He was careful to walk a little
way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get
bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn’t fall back on their favourite hobby of
hitting him. They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because
his knickerbocker glory didn’t have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought
him another one and Harry was allowed to finish the first.
Harry felt, afterward, that he should have known it was all too good to last.
After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit
windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were
crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see
huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the
largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle
Vernon’s car and crushed it into a trash can — but at the moment it didn’t look in the
mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown
coils.
“Make it move,” he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the
snake didn’t budge.
“Do it again,” Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his
knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.
“This is boring,” Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.
Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn’t have
been surprised if it had died of boredom itself — no company except stupid people
drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than
having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia
